Also, younger populations that get COVID are more likely to be mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic, and thus not get tested. So the current numbers may not truly reflect the case counts. I'm also not sure how rigorous their testing is to begin with, but either way, I don't think they're undercounting their cases intentionally as some on here are claiming.

it also doesnt help accuracy when you die over there and its all labeled a french le gripe or similar. i mean post mortem investigations and autopsies arent exactly a big thing there, especially out in the country side.

LOL WTF's a "french le gripe"?:haha:

(Note that "grippe" is the French word for influenza.)

I'm not sure if you're talking about me with that comment, but in the cases I'm somewhat familiar with (like Congo), they're not really counting (under or otherwise), nor are they "intentionally" doing anything.

The cases of deliberate nonreporting (North Korea for example) are fairly rare. For most countries it's just not intentional, they don't have the resources to do it (or even afford to take Covid seriously, in some cases).

There are a few studies that tested "participants" in morgues in Africa and they had significant positivity for SARS-CoV-2. Example is something like this: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...0248327v1.full

(It says contrary to expectations but this actually follows my expectations... I'd be surprised if these hospitals didn't have significant numbers of people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2.)

As you suggest mortality isn't the same everywhere and covid might not register as public health threat #1 in a lot of countries, partly because of younger populations but also because other threats are worse. In some countries most people are either subsistence farmers or they earn money to buy food day by day and the national government doesn't have the capacity to easily step in and support the population in a lockdown.

There has undoubtedly been damage to the "Western" brand, the question is whether this will be long-term.

People assume that just because most deaths have been focused on older age groups and people with pre-existing conditions, that this whole situation is overblown. Yet the number of deaths from Covid-19 amongst the 25-34 age group in the US is close to surpassing the toll from the 9/11 attacks. Several countries have been reporting that younger age groups (with no conditions) are now being hospitalised in higher numbers with more severe conditions. I have several friends who could cycle 300km+ in a day without fail, who are now struggling to do 100km because of the side-effects from long-Covid.

We should all be rightly worried if a new variant emerges that has a far more negative impact on younger age groups.

Geography undoubtedly helps, but Australia has also shown that internal closures along state lines are possible. The difference is the political will to make tough decisions early on, instead they either weren't made, were half-hearted or too slow to be implemented to have any positive effect.

Nonsense. I feel like this forum is just an echo chamber for think-alikes

People from these eastern countries that you keep frolicking over are still coming and will keep coming in droves to Western nations because of its values, one of which being relatively weak Government and a relatively robust private sector. Don’t any of you know any immigrants?

These same values tend to be a shortcoming during worldwide pandemics, but there is no one-size-fits all when it comes to cultures and ways to run societies. Make no mistake, the flow of immigration is and will remain in one direction: Toward the west.

The deaths of Covid among the young have been overblown. You are talking anecdotes. Everybody here keeps doing this, it’s just getting silly at this point. If you can’t differentiate anecdotes from statistics then there is nothing to discuss. The mortality rate of Covid for the young is exceedingly low, and low enough that living in fear is not rational behavior (unless you are trying to protect an elderly family member, which is a different story altogether). Just remember that 130 US children died during the 2019-2020 Flu season, and yeah I know you never heard about it because it wasn’t due to Covid.

No we shouldn’t. Complete, utter, fear mongering.

The only thing that I think would’ve made a difference early on is a complete quarantine of early infected cases. THAT, my friend, would work.

Everything else is just insanity propagating more insanity. Fear, irrationism, misinformation, and amateurs trying to set public policy. And the damage has been done. Friggin millions out of jobs

Per WHO: (IFR meaning Infection Fatality Rate, which will always overestimate true mortality rate due to there always being many undiagnosed Covid infections):

A recent (Dec 2020) systematic review and meta-analysis estimated that population IFR during the first wave of the pandemic was about 0.5% to 1% in many locations (including France, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Portugal), 1% to 2% in other locations (Australia, England, Lithuania, and Spain), and exceeded 2% in Italy. That study also found that most of these differences in IFR reflected corresponding differences in the age composition of the population and age-specific infection rates; in particular, the metaregression estimate of IFR is very low for children and younger adults (e.g., 0.002% at age 10 and 0.01% at age 25) but increases progressively to 0.4% at age 55, 1.4% at age 65, 4.6% at age 75, and 15% at age 85. These results were also highlighted in a December 2020 report issued by the WHO.

Perhaps you are thinking of someone else, but I have been discussing the success of Australia and New Zealand relative to that of the UK, US and other European nations. These two countries have amongst the best rated democracies, strongest performing economies, and most successful magnets for migrants well before Covid-19, so I fail to see your point.

Australia and New Zealand didn’t even compromise their values; they merely treated this crisis with the seriousness that it needed and followed through with the actions that were required to suppress this situation from becoming a crisis.

Again, are you confusing me for someone else? Where did I say that the mortality rate for the young wasn’t low? You even quote me saying the opposite!

I suspect the difference between you, and I is that we presumably have divergent perspectives on the value of human life, but in your example, 130 deaths of children from flu are 130 too many, as are x number of deaths from car accidents, y number of deaths from gun crime, etc… Why should any death irrelevant of whether the cause be domestic violence, terrorist attack, or virus be tolerated?

We don’t need to run around like headless chickens, but the emergence of new variants which could have higher rates of transmission and/or lethality is most certainly a present and ever evolving threat. We’re not talking rocket science here – the virus needs people to spread, the more opportunities we give the virus to adapt, the more time it has to develop new mutations. If the UK authorities and society had taken this crisis with the seriousness it required, it is doubtful that the “Kent” variant would have emerged, a variant which has been demonstrated to have 70% higher rates of transmission, 30% higher rates of hospitalisation and deaths and significant antigenic escape from naturally acquired immunity. It is pretty much inevitable that worse variants will emerge the longer we fail to get on top of this crisis, so no it is not fear mongering, it is an evidence-based critique of the situation we find ourselves in.

More people over 100 have died in the US from Covid than people aged 40-49.

Comparing the young dead to 9/11 numbers is insane. We have more 100-year-olds who have died from Covid in the US than everyone who died on 9/11. That's a crazy statistic seeing as 100-year-olds make up a TINY portion of our population.

But we keep trying to get young people scared. It's silly. It's why the news keeps posting stories of kids dying from this. Why? Statistics show kids are the best equipped to fight this off yet they keep scaring parents into submitting to irrational ideas.

The media couldn't report on it if the kids didn't actually die, lol.

^ I think the point is that the media has a lot of power to distort perspective, and to a dumb public (and the public is indeed dumb as rocks) it works. Too well.

Can we all agree that a child's death is a child's death, and it's all equally tragic? Because, once again, hundreds of kids die of Influenza yearly, and I never saw people suddenly shitting their pants over that. Perhaps that's because Lester Holt doesn't report those deaths on the NBC Evening News.

There's also a flu vaccine.

Agreed. Covid is serious and deadlier than the flu but the media has been on full tilt fear mongering mode since it began. It's working.

*delete*

We have 500,000 US deaths instead of 1,000,000 or who knows. Fear is good.

Yes, but perspective.

If I am murdered in Chicago, it would make the local news. Would it make national news? Of course not. Murders happen every day. It would have to be particularly interesting (famous person, gruesome, etc.) to make the national news.

So the very fact that there are stories about kids dying from Corona points to its rarity.

The media? As in worldwide media? Because honestly, I'd say the U.S. has taken covid much, much less seriously than many other nations. Besides, even if true, the fear mongering has likely caused many people to at least somewhat adjust their habits and has likely resulted in a significant reduction in infections and fatalities.

Is this a bad thing?

Aaron (Glowrock)

We have 500k deaths with Covid virus (or fragments of Covid virus) present in the body of the deceased. That’s not actual deaths caused by Covid or even “excess deaths”.

It seems to have varied in the US regionally, in ways that actually follow the structural similarities with Europe. Big northern cities (states, but really driven by the cities) with older populations and reliance on public transportation have had restrictions more akin to Europe. Sunbelt states where populations are younger, everyone drives, has a big house, restaurants are less physically cramped etc have had fewer restrictions.

Weather has also played a role. Florida has fewer Covid deaths than England on a per capita basis (I think actually half as many) despite limited restrictions.

The US also doesn’t have the UK’s shaky public healthcare system, which struggles with seasonal flu.